WT eyes education degree as part of push to increase doctoral grads

CANYON — West Texas A&M University’s new president is plotting a path to dramatically increase doctoral programs and boost research, with a goal of being recognized as a national university.

The university expects to have conferred three Ph.D.s when the academic year wraps up in August, which is in line with recent years, but President Walter Wendler wants to boost that number — by about seven-fold.

The first step, he said, is a doctorate program in education leadership. It will complement the university’s lone Ph.D. program, which is in agriculture.

WT is aiming to get approval from the state and accept students to the "innovative" doctoral program in fall 2018, Wendler said. The idea is to train principals and superintendents for rural schools, which he said have needs vastly different from massive urban districts.

"It will help define us as a research university focused primarily, if not exclusively, on regional issues," Wendler said.

He is expected to announce more about WT’s research-focused future during his Sept. 15 inauguration — which comes about a year after he was hired — including information about a long-range strategic plan called "WT 125." The plan, he said, will chart the course for WT through the year 2035 — the university’s 125th birthday.

Wendler said the planning process for WT 125 will take about a year and will include figuring out how to achieve a designation of a doctoral university in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.

The Carnegie classification system was developed in 1970 and is a leading framework for academics and policymakers to compare universities and still shapes public opinion by forming the basis of the popular U.S. News and World Report college rankings.

The publication groups Carnegie doctoral intuitions into its prestigious group of national universities.

To earn the ranking, WT has to confer 20 doctorates in a Carnegie classification update year. WT recorded two doctorates during the last update, which came in 2015 and relied on 2014-15 data.

The next update happens in 2018 and will use data from the 2016-17 academic year ending in August. WT said it has conferred two degrees so far during the academic year and expects one more in August.

WT has a master’s Carnegie classification, which places it in U.S. News’ regional university group.

The job ad posted by the search committee that recommended Wendler, and three others, said the new president would be expected to move the university up from its current regional Carnegie designation.

"Being able to better ourselves with a Carnegie designation brings attention to the quality of students that are going to come from WT — and they’re going to be better employees, and all that drives economic activity," said Don Powell, an Amarillo native and former Texas A&M University System regent who led the search committee.

"It creates jobs," he added.

Stepping up in classification is expected to be a long-term project. Boise State attained doctoral status during the last Carnegie reclassification in 2015 after the president there announced the goal a dozen years earlier in 2003.

Boise State launched a $175 million fundraising campaign to help break into the doctoral tier.

After earning the label, the university’s president, Bob Kustra, celebrated the research gains, saying the addition of leading researchers and new facilities also benefited undergraduate students.

The A&M system said it hired Wendler for his strategic planning experience.

While working at the university system in the 1990s, he developed a strategic plan for Texas A&M University that is still in place.

Wendler later became a lightning rod for criticism during his time as chancellor of Southern Illinois University Carbondale from 2008 to 2015.

He implemented an ambitious plan to turn the school into a top-75 research institution by 2019. The plan was plagued by accusations of plagiarism, and despite tuition hikes, the research goal was not met and enrollment started to slide.

Wendler said WT’s Carnegie goal was a "tall order" but one he was fully committed to achieving during his tenure.

WT may also get more opportunities to reach the designation. The Carnegie program is moving to three-year cycles for reclassification instead of five years, according to staff at Indiana University’s Center for Postsecondary Research, which produces the classification.

"If it doesn’t happen, that would rest on my doorstep," Wendler said. "I’m taking it very seriously."

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